Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad
By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
DEARBORN – Helping to lower the COVID count by enforcing pandemic practices presents challenges for local law enforcement personnel, who must educate, mediate and enforce the law during an already stressful time.
Police Chief Ronald Haddad said his officers have educated businesses about safe practices and visited every store in town.
“If it’s a flagrant violation, they will probably get a ticket,” he said. “But they always call a supervisor to the scene, so we evaluate them, and we try to be balanced and fair with people.”
Haddad said if residents call the police department’s non-emergency number to report a mask violation at a business, officers will initially make an effort to improve compliance with the store employees.
“We go out and educate them,” he said. “Compliance is the best tool, but when we have to write a ticket, we’ll write a ticket.”
Haddad said the department has not issued an over-abundance of tickets for mask or other COVID-19 related violations.
“Sometimes we will find somebody who is violating the mask rule, but they are engaged in criminal activity, so then they get a much more serious charge, and a more appropriate charge, as opposed to just giving them a ticket for the health violation,” he said.
Haddad said crime overall across the city is down, of which he is proud, given the extra work his staff has faced amid the pandemic.
He said his police officers are continuing to pursue serial criminals who are hitting the region, and working with their counterparts at the state and federal level.
“Giving the totality and complexity of what we have had to do for COVID, and all the added responsibilities our police department has taken on for testing and food distribution, mask distribution, educating everyone with onsite visits, and posting mask-up signs all over, I am really proud of the men and women, because they have been given a lot of additional work, and in spite of that, we’ve managed to keep crime down at 15 percent,” Haddad said.